Why ‘How to Kill Your Family’ Is a Top-Tier Hero-Villain Crossover

This is the one book that will make you question your morals this year and you need to read it right now

Image created by the editor on Canva. Cover courtesy of Amazon.

I never thought I’d sympathise with someone who killed six members of their family quite to this extent. But Bella Mackie’s How to Kill Your Family awoke some gruesome and unimaginable instincts in me.

The book follows prison inmate Grace Bernard, who is writing a confidential confession for lack of something else to do while waiting to be appealed for a crime she was wrongfully convicted of.

Early on in the book, Grace declares unfazed that she has killed six members of her family, yet she is in prison for a murder she didn’t commit. Then, she proceeds to write about all her murders, her motives and goes into exhaustive detail about how she carried them out.

The way the book is written makes it clear from the start that our protagonist may also be the villain. After all, how else would you call a cold-blooded serial murderer who feels no remorse and acts like a hunter finding amusement in the prey’s suffering?

But Grace Bernard isn’t your usual serial killer.